Sensuality contains a degree of moral knowledge which may not be ignored. It is the fact of this moral knowledge original to sensuality that establishes the appropriateness of thinking of reason’s rule over sensuality in terms of the political analogy of rulership. Sensuality is naturally ordered to reason and yet the natural involvement of the two and the mutual relation of dependence is but a lived relationship of morality and persuasion as well as obedience and to some degree consent. It might seem too strong to speak of sensuality’s consent to the rule of reason that promotes liberal conception. Rule is for the one who is superior in knowledge and justice. Reason as a faculty is naturally more directed to the common good and more ordered to justice than is sensuality with its material aspect and the particularity that comes of that. Rule of sensuality is necessary if the human proclivity to sociality is to be realized. Sensuality indicates rule of those who are free to provide counsel and not domination. When reason turned against God at the moment of the Fall, a moment when reason resisted its own ecstatic dynamism toward a life in imitation God this rule was rejected by sensuality. Importantly such a rejection was appropriate since reason tried to corrupt the nature of sensuality by removing its ecstatic dynamism and necessarily promoting a rule of domination in refusing the natural “free” pronitas of ecstatic sensuality. Law is “nothing else than an ordination of reason for the common good” and human law only has the quality of law in so far it is in accordance with right reason.”Insofar as it deviates from reason it is unjust law and has the nature not of law but of violence.” If a prince commands what is unjust, “his subjects are not required to obey him.” The disobedience of sensuality is one of the consequences of original sin and of concupiescence as a dispositive cause encouraging the will to move contrary to the judgment of reason. But it is crucial to realize that sometimes this unruliness is a rejection of false rule of reason.

As a solution to supposed anxieties of freedom which led to Fascism, Fromm spoke of the need for “relatedness,” “spontaneity,” and “self-realization” in a productive society of abundance. Implicit here is the suggestion that Fascism sprang neither from the rigors of class war nor the dread of spiritual alienation but merely from the familiar malady of poor social institutions and personal relationships. Like so many other scholars of the time, Fromm was obviously more interested in expounding a cure for Fascism than in examining with precision all its complex causes. But his message of humane social engineering was one which American liberals could readily understand. Whatever maybe the ultimate validity of his highly impressionistic Escape from Freedom, Fromm managed the remarkable, if unconvincing , feat of translating Dostoevski’s anxieties into Dewey’s aspirations.

The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom (lamentations) south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi’s commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. 1200 CE). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it on which account, by analogy, the judgment of the wicked is called, “Gehenna.” Hinnom is unto the south side of Jerusalem. Borders went up to the top of the mountain that lay before the valley of Hinnom westward which is at the end of the valley of the giants. The Book of Isaiah does not mention Gehenna by name, but the “burning place” 30:33 in which the Assyrian army is to be destroyed, may be read “Topheth”, and the final verse of Isaiah which concerns of those that have rebelled against God.

Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing, was the eye of the black bird. I was of three minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds. The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime. A man and a woman are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.
I do not know which to prefer, the beauty of inflections, or the beauty of innuendoes, the blackbird whistling, or just after.

Icicles filled the long window, with barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird crossed it, to and fro. the mood
traced in the shadow an indecipherable cause.

O thin men of Haddam, (disbelievers), why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird walks around the feet of the women about you? I know noble accents and lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, that the blackbird is involved in what I know.

When the blackbird flew out of sight, it marked the edge of one of many circles. At the sight of blackbirds flying in a green light, even the bawds of euphony, would cry out sharply. He rode over Connecticut in a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him, in that he mistook the shadow of his equipage for blackbirds. The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.

It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing and it was going to snow. The blackbird sat in the cedar-limbs.

The keystone of fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, of its functions, its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. (Benito Mussolini.)

From Machiavelli, G.B. Vico must yet be connected with the great Florentine from whom in a certain way he seems to proceed. In the heyday of “natural law” Vico is decidedly opposed to ius naturale and in his attacks against its advocates, Grotius, Seldenus and Pufendorf he systematically assails the abstract, rationalistic, and utilitarian principles of the eighteenth century. A scholar correctly states: While the “natural jurists” basing justice and state on utility and interest and grounding human certitude on reason, were striving to draft permanent codes and construct the perfect state, Vico strongly asserted the social nature of man, the ethical character of the juridical consciousness, and its growth through human history and not reason rather than in sacred history. Vico therefore maintains that doctrines must begin with those subjects that take up and explain the entire course of civilization. Experience and not ratiocination, history and not human reason must help human wisdom to understand civil and political regimes that were the result of not reason or philosophy but common sense, or if you will the social consciousness of man. and further on, “to Vico we owe the conception of history in its fullest sense as teacher of life, the search after the humanity of history, the principle that makes the truth progress with time, the discovery of the “political course of nations.” It is Vico who uttered the eulogy of patrician “heroic hearts” of the first founders of states, magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth and wise counselors of politics. To Vico we owe the criticism of democracies, the affirmation of their brief existence, of their rapid disintegration at the hands of fascism and demagogues, of their lapse first into anarchy, then into monarchy, when their degradation does not make them prey of foreign oppressors. Vico conceived of civil liberty as subjection to law, as just subordination of the private to the public interest, to the sway of the State. It is Vico who sketched modern society as a world of nations, each one guarding its own empire, fighting just and not unjust human wars. In Vico we find the condemnation of pacificism, that right is actualized by bodily force, that without force, right is of no avail and that therefore “he who cannot defend himself against injury is enslaved.” It is not difficult to discern the analogies between these affirmations and the fundamental view and the spirit of fascism. Nor should we marvel at the this similarity. Fascism, has its roots in the Risorgimento, and the Risorgimento was influenced undoubtedly by Vico. It would be inexact to affirm that the philosophy of Vico dominated the Risorgimento, (19th century movement for Italian political unity.) The influence of Italian tradition as summed up by Mazinni whose interpretation of the citizen as duty and mission is to be connected to Vico’s doctrine. Training for social duty said Mazinni is essentially and logically unitarian. Life for it is but a duty, a mission. And further on, “the declaration of rights, which all constitutions insist on copying slavishly from the French considered the individual as the end and pointed to only the half of the problem,” and again, “assume the existence of one of the crises that threaten the life of the nation and demand the active sacrifice of its sons.” Will you ask the citizens to face martyrdom in virtue of their rights? And now you ask them to sacrifice for one and all, suffer and die for the safety of the nation? In Mazzini’s conception of the citizen as an instrument for the attainment of the nation’s ends and therefore submissive to a higher mission to the duty of supreme sacrifice, we see the anticipation of one the fundamental points of fascist doctrine. Unfortunately, the autonomy of political thought of Italy seemed to exhaust itself immediately after the unification. Italian political thought, which had been original in times of servitude, became enslaved during times of freedom. A powerful innovating movement, issuing from the war and of which fascism is the purest expression.

In orthodox Stoic doctrine, the final transition from the ultimate phase of moral progress to wisdom happens through a radical and instantaneous manner. At that moment man lays aside his wickedness at once and instead acquires all virtues simultaneously.

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Seneca underlines the reciprocal character of all moral guidance. He learns while teaching making use of his friend Lucilius. He talks to Lucilius while he introspects. Accordingly the proficientes serve the self-evaluation of Seneca. By painting the ideal of the sage with all its colors, Seneca sketches the horizon against which all the whole process of moral progress takes place. “And at what should we aim?” Seneca gives this ideal attractive powers to further his efforts, (“what shall we win.”) Mere praise of the sage connected with the condition the heretic (immoral) finds himself might lead to conditions of defeatism. By pointing to what has been realized already, moral progress is possible. “Think of what you have gained already.” At the same time such attitude even further encourages, “think of what you can still gain.”Seneca’s stoicism gives recommendations in the process of moral improvement. Fortune does not give virtue nor does it take it away. Nor does one receive virtue from nature: nobody is born wise. For the ideal presupposes a strongly developed knowledge. Now nature gives the seeds of virtue and knowledge, (giving reason as sufficient instrument.) But it does not give reason as perfect, but leading to perfect actions only when is one obedient.) Seneca is convinced that one leaves behind depravity at the moment one attains wisdom. The phases of moral progress can be identified as a differentiation of classes such that “a class of men who are making progress as having escaped the diseases of the mind, but not yet the passions. But are still standing on slippery ground. Because no one is beyond the danger of wickedness in himself. Except him who has wholly thrown it off. But no one has thrown it off except the man who has adopted wisdom in its stead. Seneca differentiates that these honorable actions are also created by proficientes and not simply by precepts. Seneca argues as follows: if ethical action is necessary for virtue and admonishment provides the necessary ethics, then admonishment is necessary too.

On the path of virtue, and its reception in philosophy.2005 By Geert Roskam. Uitgevenen met de steun van de Universitaire Stichting van Belgie en de K.U. Leuven Commissie voor publicaties. http://tinyurl.com/ktjm47h